Like all of us, today’s guest had to face the hardships brought on by the global pandemic in 2020 – one of which was having her children learn at home instead of in school.

But for her and her kids, something peculiar happened – and they actually thrived in the online experience.

She later learned that other parents and their kids did not, unfortunately, thrive to the same degree – and this led her to try to figure out what worked for her – and how she could share that. This inspired the creation of Edify – a tutor matchmaking service which is on a mission to help neurodivergent kids everywhere thrive in an optimal learning experience.

We had a fascinating conversation where we talked about how she was able to bottle the inspiration – and figure out what actually made the experience work. How putting extra effort into matchmaking up front pays dividends later on, and how she is working to scale the business without losing the magic at its core.

I learned a lot from the interview – and hope you do as well.

Links:

Priya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priya-tron/
Edify: https://www.edifylearningspaces.com/

The startup journey is full of twists and turns – but it can also present new opportunities as you go down the path.

Today’s guest, Katelyn Alberts started her journey with the idea of building a marketplace – and quickly transformed it into something even greater than that.

During our talk, we covered some really timely topics for any founder:

- How Katelyn, as a nontechnical founder, was able to navigate the tough question of whether to hire a tech team or recruit a tech founder – and how she discovered an even better approach.

- How to go from seeing a problem that needs to be solved – to deciding to take action on it yourself.

- What to do when you get started – and how to define your MVP

- The challenges of building a 2 sided marketplace – and knowing how to recruit participants on both sides.

- How adding a community mastermind to the mix can add huge value to the core members of the audience – and generate more revenue to help grow the business

- The importance of getting the formula right in one location – to achieve “density” – before scaling

Links for Katelyn:

VERVERY: https://www.ververy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katelynalberts/

Starting and building companies is an amazing rollercoaster of ups and downs – and for many founders, achieving a successful exit at the end of the process is the ultimate goal.

I’ve been fortunate enough to experience 2 major exits in my founder career – and I learned a ton from both of them. Today’s guest, Mac Lackey – has gone through a total of 6 major exits in his startup career.

Starting out in the midst of the first web explosion of the mid-90’s, Mac quickly built and sold his first company – and has then learned how to capitalize on opportunity after opportunity since.

I had a fascinating conversation with Mac about the ups and down, the huge takeaways – how he improved his craft with each exit. And – how we all can learn from his experiences to drive something he called optionality into our own startup experience.

I hope you get as many gems out of our conversation as I did!

Links:

Exit DNA: https://exitdna.com/
Book: https://exitdna.com/book/